The importance of sustainability in the workplace is commonplace nowadays, but not in every sense of the word. Companies in the Netherlands have been actively reducing their carbon footprint by making sure their buildings are energy efficient. However, the importance of a healthy workplace seems to be of lesser importance for Dutch companies, according to a recent survey. AM RED and QSI have joined forces to make a difference and create healthier spaces for people to work.
Only five to ten percent of Dutch offices that have been built in recent years comply with healthy workplace regulations according to BNR (Dutch source). One of the problems is that developers construct these buildings with only the needs of the first tenants in mind, i.e. only catering to the needs of the first 5-10 years of usage.
With sustainability and social corporate responsibility high on the agenda, AM RED (Dutch real estate developer) is focusing on ‘the healthy office’. The welfare of employees have to be put first and AM RED plans to make this happen by using Big Data.
Data is the key to success, according to AM RED director Raymon van Miltenburg. “Collecting data is very important because the demand for healthy offices is high, but research into this topic is lacking. Therefore, we have partnered up with the Quantified Self Institute (QSI), which is part of Hanze UAS. They are researching healthy offices for us and share the generated data with us. These data can be used to identify characteristics of a healthy building and, thereby, we are well-equiped to advise our customers. A key element in this, however, is respect for privacy of individuals; there are limits to level of data usage.”
You can read more about healthy workplaces and the cooperation between AM RED and QSI on this subject here (Dutch source): https://vastgoedjournaal.nl/news/27344
